She-Hulk will show the “lighter side” of Daredevil

Who says the Man Without Fear needs to be dour all the time? The next Marvel series on Disney+, She-Hulk, will see Charlie Cox once more step into the role of Matt Murdock, aka Daredevil. Cox originally played the character in all three seasons of Daredevil and the miniseries The Defenders over at Netflix, before he made the leap to the Marvel Cinematic Universe during 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Ever since it was first revealed that Cox’s Daredevil would be crossing paths with superhero lawyer Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany) in She-Hulk, fans have been speculating whether he’ll play the same Daredevil they new from the Netflix series or a different one — perhaps a variant, since we’re now into the Multiverse Saga. While that remains a lingering question, She-Hulk creator Jessica Gao does think that the series will show us a side of Daredevil we haven’t seen before.

“And it was so fun to be able to do–and we do this with every character cameo from the MCU–is we take them from the environment that you know them from, which is a much more dramatic and action-oriented role, much more on the serious side, and we bring them into our world and they get to play in the tone of She-Hulk. And they got to explore and we get to see a lighter side of that character,” Gao told The Direct. 

"And Charlie is so wonderful. He’s so game to do whatever, and he’s such a wonderful actor, and a wonderful human being. What was so fun about bringing him and Daredevil into our world is that people have already seen a Daredevil who is very dramatic, little bit on the heavy side, very dark, brooding."

From the sounds of things, the Daredevil we’ll meet in She-Hulk will be a less serious version of the character in part because She-Hulk is a less serious show; it’s not necessarily indicative of how Daredevil will be represented in stuff like Daredevil: Born Again or Echo. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is all about the crossovers, and the guests are going to adjust to fit the host show.

She-Hulk wasn’t allowed to use Spider-Man

She-Hulk will mark the first time fans will see Charlie Cox back in the actual Daredevil suit since his character joined the MCU, though it’ll be a slightly different color than when we last saw him over at Netflix. Cox’s last appearance as the character was in Spider-Man: No Way Home, but he only appeared in his capacity as Matt Murdock, attorney at law. This time, we’ll see the devil back in action. It’s a big moment for fans of the Netflix series, who’ve been waiting to see Cox back in the suit since Daredevil was unceremoniously canceled back in 2018.

According to Gao, it was a pleasant surprise that Marvel even allowed the show to use Daredevil in the first place. “[W]e were shocked that we were able to use him. Like, when we first heard that he was on the table, I mean, we couldn’t believe it. We kept thinking like, ’Okay, at some point, someone’s gonna say ‘Just kidding.‘ Like, ‘It’s a cruel joke, and you actually can’t have him.’ And it just kept going and kept going.”

"There were a lot of characters from the comics — we wanted a lot of the comics for characters for fun situations where we could bring in like a character and think of like funny reasons why they would be in legal trouble. But there were a lot of characters that were from the comics that we couldn’t use either because of a rights issue, or there were a few times where it was because Marvel… all they would say is that they had other plans. And that’s all they would tell us. And then, we tried very, very hard to poke, and prod, and get a little bit more information. Of course, they wouldn’t tell us."

However, there was a particular Marvel character that the She-Hulk writers really wanted to include that they were told was off limits: “I will say, the one MCU character that really bummed out a lot of the writers in our room that we couldn’t use was Spider-Man and anyone involved around…like in the Spider-Man universe. Because we had so many Spider-Man fans in the room.”

So despite the fact that Jennifer Walters and Matt Murdock will be kicking around the same neighborhood in She-Hulk, don’t expect Peter Parker to get in on the fun. It makes sense since Marvel Studios shares joint custody of Spidey and his rogues gallery with Sony, but still, it would have been fun to see.

She-Hulk premieres on Disney+ on August 18.

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h/t The Direct